


All I Want For Christmas Is You

by flightofangels



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Autistic Character, Cab Rides, Christmas, Christmas Music, Christmas Party, Christmas Presents, Christmas in Japan, Fourth of July, Gen, Gift Giving, Grocery Shopping, Karaoke, Makeup, Meet the Family, Non-Linear Narrative, Plane rides, Shopping, Train Rides, bipolar character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7911304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightofangels/pseuds/flightofangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murasakibara is scrambling for the perfect gift, wrestling with ambivalent memories about the Fourth of July, and working on not losing the Winter Cup a second year in a row. This is the ideal time for Himuro to announce he's planning a Christmas party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What's This?

**Author's Note:**

> This fic complies with Extra Game, taking place a few months later, and there will be spoilers in subsequent chapters.
> 
> A few original characters will appear, though none will be prominent.

## December 22

The streets of Tokyo are much less organized than the air conditioned atmosphere of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. Citizens mumble sternly into their cell phones, lights blink in all colors on the marquees of tall buildings. The air is relatively dry, and the surface of the sidewalk scrapes against the treads of any sports sneakers.

Murasakibara Atsushi gives voice to his feelings, the ones he usually has in the heart of the capital: “This is such a rowdy city. Maybe it would be better to live on a farm in the country.”

“That might be nice,” comes an absentminded voice, about a foot below his ears. As usual, his only walking companion is Himuro Tatsuya. Murasakibara is used to viewing games and meeting rivals with Himuro as his partner. Liu Wei usually goes separately with the other two starting members. He’d sat with Okamura and Fukui last year.

Murasakibara agreed to continue this arrangement before his partner had even actually offered his usual deal-sweetening snacks. Care packages from America had stopped coming around that time, so it was for the best. He was happier like this, without being scolded for whatever happened when he wandered off alone, and Liu would be worse company. Himuro usually had something sensible to say, and the few times he got sentimental instead, that was almost more impressive its own way. In fact, Murasakibara was surprised he didn’t make a more snarky remark just now.

“You didn’t enjoy the farm much the time we went there for volunteer day,” was what Himuro said the last time they were in Tokyo for a summer training camp, in response to a very similar complaint And it’s not like Murasakibara will acknowledge he was wrong about his own preferences, or anything. He just needs to find a farm that was really like the ones in the movies, with friendly spiders and fluffy chickens, instead of cows that kicked. He doesn’t like his partner saying something obviously different from what everyone knew he really thought, however.

“What I would do is leave a barrel out there to gather rain, like, to use as water for the plants most of the time, and then, I’d put it under the apple tree, so when the apples fall, you can charge people to go bobbing for apples, and make a fortune,” he rambles.

Without waiting at all, Himuro says, “I’d totally do that.”

Now he’s starting to get seriously annoyed. Usually Murasakibara can see the basic form of somebody walking beside him, that’s it. He has to purposefully glance down, like now, if he wants to finally see that Himuro isn’t even looking at him. Just tapping away at his smartphone screen. Murasakibara grits his teeth, frustrated that he doesn’t know what to do. Asking “Muro-chin, are you listening?” would be totally pointless, because all he would get in reply would be “Oh, yeah, totally.”

“Your fancy hair would get messed up. What a shame,” is what he says instead. An avid user of similar products, Kise, had learned this the hard way, when he used a full-sized Western-style bath for the first time in Hawaii at the hotel where they stayed for Teiko’s annual summer training camp. 

“No, it wouldn’t,” says Himuro in an airy voice. His dulcet tones drive Murasakibara crazy. Last year, the chill had sometimes worked to the detriment of his demeanor; now he had a coat that actually fit Japan’s climate, courtesy of Liu as a birthday gift. Even when he isn’t really listening, this eighteen-year-old always sounds amicable and attentive in a way that ugly lumbering giants can never match.

The worst part is, Himuro is right. He’s become addicted to the same waterproof products that Kise started using in high school as a guard against tears.

“Muro-chin, why are we walking this way?” The question comes out suddenly, just as soon as Murasakibara realizes they’re crossing the street. He always focuses on Himuro when they’re in the middle of a road. American suburb life quite effectively acclimatizes outdoorsy boys to cars. Murasakibara is sure, though, that they were already past Sendagaya station, and their hotel is the same as last year.

“What? Oh, no, it’s not like that.” When the two of them alight on the sidewalk corner a few seconds later and stand facing each other, Murasakibara sees Himuro taking his hand, empty, out of his deep coat pocket. At least while crossing the street, Himuro had put away his phone. Who had been talking to him, though? Whenever he can get away with it, which admittedly isn’t often with his teammates, Himuro holds his phone that way and texted in English because it was easier to type. Kagami always gets voice calls, though, because that guy hates reading texts in any language (especially from the already reticent, cryptic Kuroko). Alex seems unlikely because she usually can’t come up to Japan this early, and they would have heard by now if something about that changed. None of Himuro’s friends in America would be up yet, not even Nijimura with his exercise routine. The options for people Himuro knew, currently in Japan, who preferred to text in English, are basically narrowed down to one, and Murasakibara doesn’t like it at all.

“That so? Then what?” His eyebrows arch. He can feel it coming on, the urge to crush something. This emotion is difficult to describe in terms clearer than “Muro-chin is about to do something I didn’t expect, and that means I don’t like it already.” It would have been different if he was taking them to do something fun, though Himuro ought to have asked first. At least then there wouldn’t have been all this thinking and doubt necessary. Obviously this is not leading up to an outing, it’s something else, which definitely means it’s bad. Himuro hates, and therefore often hides, bad news.

Other good reasons would probably come to mind for someone else that thought a lot about other’s feelings, like Momoi. (Come to think of it, Himuro himself would probably know this well too, not that it helped much now.) The winter holidays would mark the beginning of the third trimester when third-years would retire from the club and study for university entrance exams. Kuroko talks a lot about the anticipation of his upperclassmen graduating, their passage into the adult world with a deepened sense of direction, always a moment away but never again at arm’s length. The feeling is bittersweet, apparently, like a lemon macaroon. 

Unless Rakuzan makes another incredibly transparent request for a practice game with Yosen in the intermediate location of Tokyo, this will be the last time that Himuro gets to go out in Tokyo and paint the town purple with his favorite of the fellow Yosen players. Namely, Murasakibara. He's Himuro's favorite. Not some other person.

Himuro has never said, “You're my favorite, Atsushi.” It's a little underwhelming given how often Americans in Hollywood movies are expected to express their feelings using words. Murasakibara has instead made this inference using evidence.

The most substantial support for Himuro's favor, of course, is the invitation he generously extended a few months ago, to Murasakibara alone. They spent four days at Himuro's family home in Los Angeles to celebrate the Fourth of July. Food got grilled on a barbecue. Loud fireworks went off. The whole affair greatly drained his energy. Months later, he still finds himself often thinking about the trip. "Sweltering" is the word with which Murasakibara would usually describe such an event, except they spent most of their time indoors where there was a lot of air conditioning. 

Not only did Himuro have no guests besides Murasakibara; most of his other family members hadn't brought guests at all. Ergo, Murasakibara is his favorite. After this trip was when most of Himuro's most flagrant snubbings of Murasakibara occurred, and also the care packages stopped coming in the mail. Well, if correlation implied causation, then the quantum physicists would have solved entanglement by now.

“Actually,” says Himuro, “I won’t be going into the hotel.” He's looking up into Murasakibara’s eyes and smiling. His words are clear, like the shape of the gloss on his lips. “My parents were just messaging me about how it would be okay for me to stay in their house during the tournament, and I can invite as many of our friends as I want. So I’ll be heading there.”

Murasakibara is right, for once. His partner had been hiding something, and it was bad. There isn’t anything he can do about it, though, so he says, “Really? Kay, then.”

Himuro raises his hand, fingertips red from the chill, and waves. “Bye,” he says, just that single syllable in English, and then he walks away, leaving Murasakibara alone in the middle of the sidewalk.

Going down the road to the hotel without his partner to follow is troublesome, so for a couple minutes Murasakibara doesn’t do that. There’s plenty of Tokyo around him to take into consideration, such as the stores that had come and gone in the past few months. Right by the corner is a FamilyMart. Akita had plenty of those. Halfway down the street stands the dedicated candy shop. Last time, their doors definitely closed at five.

Maybe Murasakibara should get something from the hotel gift shop. There are usually resealable bags of pretzels in stock, at least. The October ones were shaped like pumpkins, so it stands to reason that this month might be reindeer antlers or something.

Just as he feels secure in his decision, his cell phone rings. Smiling back up at him is a face shaped like an upside-down strawberry parfait: Momoi. He stabs around the green “accept” square with his gloved fingers, uselessly, before bringing the phone up to his face. As the screen smudges against his cheek, he pulls down the notification bar at the top and caught a few words from unread texts out of the corner of his eye. “Akashi-kun’s birthday party.” Right, that. December 22nd was good enough for him this year, even though last year Mayuzumi hadn’t been invited at all to a gathering on the 20th because he would be in the spotlight too much. The summons after the opening ceremony of the last Winter Cup was a lot more similar in spirit.

“Mukkun, where are you? I know there are thirty minutes until Akashi-kun is supposed to actually show up, but there are only so many place settings and Nebuya-san is about to call Higuchi—”

He had completely forgotten about why getting back to the hotel with no excursions was so important tonight. Murasakibara puts his phone back into his pocket, letting it hang up that way, and turns the corner towards the mall. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and besides, he won’t be getting through that gathering with anything less than six pieces of dark chocolate.

## July 3

Murasakibara turns his suitcase upside down, shakes it a couple times for good measure, and at length hurls the whole thing down onto the ground. “I can’t believe I didn’t pack my toothpaste!” Why did Aomine use up all his bad luck and forget his entire passport back when they took their first training camp in Hawaii, only for this to happen now, when Murasakibara had never done anything wrong? Okay, he had made an own goal against Ogiwara. And promised to crush Kiyoshi. And refused to play in a game just because Akashi said so… Fine. He had done some things wrong. Just nothing this wrong.

“Calm down, Atsushi! You don’t need to worry about toothpaste. We have some. You can brush your teeth as soon as we get there. It’ll be fine.”

Himuro can’t be blamed for not knowing that the time when his teeth are brushed won’t be the problem. There’s no time to take the trouble of arguing, anyway. “Whatever.” Murasakibara nudges along the suitcase with his foot until he reaches the velvet cord. The staff member raises her eyebrows when she sees the descriptive words on his ID (height, hair color, eye color), but none of them are false, and he’s allowed to proceed. In spite of covering his eyes, Himuro gets through too after a particularly threatening smile. 

“I got you this aisle seat,” says Himuro. What they didn’t take into account was how long it would take for the owner of the window seat to arrive. Murasakibara has just gotten frustrated and sat down with his seatbelt fastened when of course this incredibly delicate old man shows up. Clambering isn’t an option for a geezer with those joints, so Murasakibara has to stand. He hits his head against the overhead compartment, at which point Himuro reaches down to undo his seatbelt for him – with hands that are much more experienced at that kind of thing, applying pressure to the tab before beginning to tug the other side. He’s leaning in so close, his ring dangles, and the chilled metal of the necklace chain brushes against Murasakibara’s face.

They’re both standing up, though the back of Murasakibara’s head still presses against the fabric of the seat, as the other passenger finally makes his way over and sits down. Everyone takes their places and within minutes the plane begins its ascent. Murasakibara braces his hands against his kneecaps the whole time; they don’t have extra leg room, Himuro’s family wouldn’t shell out for that when the original budget was for only one ticket, so for his feet to be flat against the ground puts his chin barely forty centimeters above his knees, with his neck slouched enough that his hair doesn’t graze against the warmth of the overhead lamps. 

Half an hour has passed, according to the watch that he won in a sweepstakes from eating forty boxes of matcha-flavored Maiubo in the last two weeks of April, before he can concentrate enough to make an attempt at alleviating his boredom. The old man is reading, which is why he had turned his overhead lamp on. Himuro has headphones in his ears and a sleep mask on, though it’s plain, not the usual embroidered one. Murasakibara looks down at the darkened screen of Himuro’s smart phone, taps the power button to get a display of information about the current song, sees the album cover and a paragraph of text. He doesn’t feel comfortable scrolling through the rest – especially since his fingers might leave smudges that meticulous Himuro would notice – and draws his hand away. The screen goes black again, and with less light, Himuro’s clothes likewise appear uniformly dark instead of patterned.  
When he read the menu for this flight, the snacks for sale seemed acceptable. Murasakibara is rapidly realizing that he underestimated the differences between this and his previous experiences flying to Hawaii, about half as long, or, for that matter, even shorter excursions to other locations within eastern Asia. There are much longer intervals between meal services. 

This is probably why the plane is outfitted with those dinky touchscreens on the back of every seat. Murasakibara finally gets desperate enough to try turning on his own Entertainment Sensation, though this takes several tries because the buttons are so small. Somebody turns around to hiss at him, the owner of the seat in front of his, apparently having his jimmies rustled by all this jostling. Murasakibara simply scowls in response. If he didn’t want his travel experience to involve any turbulence, he should have taken a boat.

With the entertainment finally activated, Murasakibara tabs through (the touch screen itself requires somewhat less force) to this American cartoon show with Japanese subtitles. A few minutes in, he realizes that the audio is not just quiet but nonexistent, evidently refusing to play unless he inserts headphones for the convenience of the other passengers. Murasakibara considers doing that. He thinks about it all the way through the credits of the episode’s first half (since like many cartoons, the half-hour episodes are split into two skits). Then he decides that the process of rummaging through his pockets would be more boring than watching the show, but having just English dialogue wouldn’t actually make the show less boring.

This is how he spends pretty much the entire rest of the flight except for when there are snacks. When the flight attendant comes through, Murasakibara is so excited to face her that his elbow strikes Himuro. His seatmate murmurs a few English words, Murasakibara assumes as a polite refusal given the deferentially raised palm of his hand. The bags on the airplane, like always, are too small, and Murasakibara knows he’s making a bit of a mess on the tray as he shakes the container hoping to get some more crumbs out of the crinkles. Midorima would always scold him about that, but not actually do anything, too reluctant to get his hands dirty. This time, though still listless, Himuro is just barely awake enough to reach out and wag his fingers, flicks his wrist to dust off the worst of the mess onto the floor. Murasakibara doesn’t want to get scolded like that again, so he restrains himself a little more during subsequent visits of the snack cart, and overall it’s a lot less fun.

About ninety minutes before they touch down, Himuro has taken his mask off. Did he have an alarm or something? Murasakibara watches out of the corner of his eye as Himuro removes his headphones and begins to look at his phone. He’s probably managing his Facebook messages from his relatives. 

Murasakibara isn’t particularly interested and goes back to his cartoons. There’s no reason to strike up a conversation with Himuro just because he happens to be awake and sitting next to him. They sit next to each other, awake, all the time. Watching Disney movies, for example, and one of them not crying.

Finally they touch down, and it’s like the liberation of France. Murasakibara stands up right away and marches towards the front of the plane, leaving Himuro to fetch both of their bags. “Here you go, Atsushi,” says Himuro when he catches up. His voice is thin, perhaps from the limited oxygen inside the cabin.

“Thanks, Muro-chin,” Murasakibara says, taking his own bag.

With his load lightened, Himuro can take the lead. They walk right pass the Auntie Anne’s pretzel stand and turn out to be on the second floor of the building, coming up to a viewing platform where they can see the ground floor below. By the front door’s benches, two tall, dark-haired people are sitting, probably a married couple. 

The man among them lifts his head and waves his arm. He’s first to approach the two boys when they come down the stairs. Mr. Himuro claps a hand on his son’s shoulder and then turns to say, “You must be Atsushi.”

“We’ve heard so much about you,” says Mrs. Himuro, who has gone for the next best young man available and hugged Murasakibara.

“Okay, Muro-chin’s mom,” says Murasakibara, who is really not sure if that’s supposed to mean Himuro said good things or not so good things.

Both the adults say that he’s free to call them by their given names, but by the time they’ve gotten into the car, Murasakibara has forgotten the actual syllables they use. He leans back into the soft headrest and is surprised to find enough space that he can tilt his neck enough to brush his forehead against the ceiling of the car instead of having the roof crush right down on the top of his head. He could almost fall asleep against these fabrics, softer than the plane and no armrests digging into his sides this time, except Himuro is engaged in an animated conversation with his parents about other people (either a family member or a classmate, Murasakibara can’t remember which Rena-san). Left with nothing better to do, Murasakibara turns on his phone and discovers that roaming service has activated.

The real surprise of the evening comes when they’re in the garage. Murasakibara is jarred by the grumbling noise of the automatic garage closing. He gets out and walks through the side door. It’s only after he’s on the other side, in the laundry room, that he realizes he never had to lower his head to pass under the doorframe.

“Your house is really nice,” says Murasakibara in a high rasp.

“We got that energystar washing machine just last month at the clearance warehouse,” says Mr. Himuro with a proud smile. Himuro is smiling also and shaking his head at his mother, who is looking at the three of them, confused. She’s already ahead of them in the kitchen, using a marker to cross off a square high up on the wall-mounted calendar whiteboard. The granite countertops are host to several transparent plastic boxes of muffins, scones, and organic fruits.

“Hey, I’ve already wiped those off,” says Mrs. Himuro as she spots Murasakibara reaching for the cinnamon scones. “Don’t worry, there will be plenty for breakfast tomorrow.”

“The bathroom is on the other side between the office and the guest bedroom where you’ll be sleeping,” says Mr. Himuro. “I think that’s it. Anyway, if you need us for anything, we’ll just be here watching TV until we go up to the master bedroom.”

“My room’s upstairs, too,” says Himuro, who is leaning his elbow on the staircase, like he’s a model who’s posed there hundreds of times. “Good night, Atsushi.”

Murasakibara stands in the middle of the house for about one minute, dazed staring at the television’s crime drama (surprisingly gun heavy), before he wanders off to the indicated rooms. He unzips his suitcase just enough to reach inside for his pajamas and soap, then with his knee nudges the luggage the rest of the way into the bedroom. 

The bathroom, he sees when he walks inside, is much emptier than the main one in his family home, as a natural consequence of fewer than seven people living here, and more drawers installed to boot. The floor, however, is much less clean than the one Murasakibara had to sweep on Tuesdays and Thursdays; once the water is turned on, he’s smirking to himself the whole time he takes off his shirt, and it’s only after that when he realizes the dark gray marks on the tile came from his own sneakers.

He gets rid of everything and steps inside the bathtub. He puts down the soap, in its purple box, on the shelf, where it sits next to many different products with English labels. The recurring word that he can most easily read is “natural”. 

The floor of the shower is a single surface uninterrupted by tiles or grout or any particular traction. Murasakibara might be slipping if his feet weren’t so large. The shower head emits less water than any other model he’s ever seen, and he shuffles back and forth to get all areas of his skin under the stream at some point. “What a pain,” he grumbles, and decides that he can open the box of soap tomorrow.

When he gets out, the air is barely cold, and just one pass with the towel makes him feel dry enough to walk around, though he hasn’t rubbed his ankles at all. The smooth surface of the countertop lies waiting for him, complete with integrated sink, and adjacent dental hygiene supplies. Murasakibara tears the toothbrush’s wrapper with one hand. He doesn’t know which of the empty buckets is a trash can and which is a clothes hamper, so he leaves the plastic on the counter and puts the toothbrush under the faucet. The toothpaste, he doesn’t touch yet – it’s mint. Maybe he can get away with leaving it off.  
As soon as he presses the toothbrush against his teeth, he regrets his hubris. Without the paste pressed into a flatter smear than the original squishy lump, he can feel that the toothbrush itself is much less wide than his teeth. He tries to move in a different direction to see if a shorter tooth will give better results, only for the bristles to press into the delicate gum between his biscupid and canine, not buffered by paste, just lubricated by water. 

There’s no helping it. He takes the toothbrush out, applies toothpaste, and gets back to work. As soon as he makes contact with his incisors, the aroma of mint makes his nostrils flare, and he’s breathing heavily, feels the burn on the skin inside his lips. Murasakibara catches sight of the mirror and can’t meet his own eyes but surprisingly enough his mouth is barely fogged at all. He reaches out to gauge whether this surface actually reflects reality. His fingers smudge the glass, marring the image of him in a completely different place from the lines of drool.

Now that the faucet isn’t running, the voices on the television sound louder. Murasakibara gets dressed, fishes his phone out from the pockets of his pants, and pads off into the bedroom. The battery is almost dead. He takes his charger out of his suitcase and turns the phone itself off. He doesn’t have practice, there’s no particular reason to set an alarm for tomorrow.

Murasakibara lies down on the Western style bed and finds that from head to foot the mattress is actually a couple centimeters longer than his own height. However, once he actually props up his head on the pillows, his heels stick off, and the comforter wrinkles against the damp fabric of his socks, dampened at the ankles. The television still sounds pretty loud. Murasakibara didn’t close the door. He kicks it shut, with no effect whatsoever on the television.

## December 23

The next morning, when he wakes up, Murasakibara is proud of himself for having a plan. He doesn’t actually remember the plan by the time he leaves his bedroom, after all the stress of getting as far as the elevator before a little kid complimented his purple extra-large indoor slippers (he has to bring his own from home, the hotels never have his size in stock – he'd wondered if they would in America, before he learned that they don’t have these accessories at all there; Himuro never wears the provided slippers in the first place, and when they room together Himuro always dispenses a reminder for Murasakibara while putting on his own shoes). He had to go back and change. It’s times like this that he wishes he fit into the stairwell and wasn’t usually wearing sneakers that slapped on the uncarpeted concrete steps.

There's a difference from the interhigh that took place in another prefecture. Kagami lives in Tokyo; he isn’t staying at this hotel, so Murasakibara doesn’t have competition to clean out the buffet. It’s paradise. He’s on his third plate of miniature cinnamon rolls when Himuro passes by, holding a glass of orange juice, and says “Morning, Atsushi.”

Murasakibara is so shocked that he drops his fork, and it lands on its side over the roll before tipping over and flatly smearing the icing. “Muro-chin? What are you doing here?” Murasakibara’s first thought is that he’s here to enjoy the free breakfast too, but that can’t be right – Himuro came from his house equipped with a kitchen where he can cook way better than these people, and he’s gone on rants before about the nauseating number of empty calories in the French toast.

“Oh, this is for Liu,” Himuro says. “I’m here for Coach’s meeting.” (Himuro’s visible eye darts down slightly; Murasakibara realizes that his own face must be frowning. This is what happens when Himuro isn’t in his room, setting a silent vibrating alarm only to end up singing Fall Out Boy in the shower. Murasakibara is late for things. Not late yet, but at this rate if he finishes all of this food, then he’ll have to go upstairs, brush his teeth, and spend no additional time relaxing in his room before he goes right back down in the elevator again. Troublesome.) “He’s going to stay at my place, though the other two starting members said no.” That’s pretty worrying. Is Liu edging in on Murasakibara’s turf? The two third-years have more elective classes together this term. “Tonight we’re going to go shopping for party supplies before moving in.” 

Murasakibara sees his trump card. Liu is the worst shopping partner imaginable. The three of them once went out during roadwork to get exercise supplies for the other two new regulars. Every five minutes, Liu’d ask, “what’s this? What’s that?” Himuro lost his temper. He hates not knowing the answer to these questions about his own birthplace. That time, the cash register operator had to call security. Murasakibara on the other hand is comfortable at getting oriented in a store, and quick as long as he’s been there before, which will probably be the case in Tokyo. People are surprised every time they discover this about him. Annoying. Where do they think he buys his snacks? Online?

“By the way, I’ve decided,” Murasakibara says, casually, because he decides these things all by himself. “I want to go, too, I’ll be ready to leave as soon as we win the game today.” (There are plenty of first-year benchwarmers who were forced into quads because otherwise their parents wouldn’t pony up the money to come down this far. Murasakibara had a single during the summer training camp his first year. He’s sure that his departure from the reserved double room won’t have any more consequences than Himuro’s departure did.)

“Because we’ll definitely win this time,” Himuro says, and he smiles, his lips making a little triangular window that exposes his teeth, eyelids lowering instead of crinkling; carnivorous, in a word. He presses his fist against Murasakibara’s chest.

They win, which is to say that none of the players have watched tapes of Himuro’s Mirage Shot, except the ones a foot shorter and a lot slower than Murasakibara. He feels frustrated by it, though he didn’t watch tapes for this game either. Himuro made his remark because there weren’t any games to watch today, even by their coach’s most conservative recommendation. There are a lot of roster-mixups happening with the other main players, Riko and Momoi have gotten intense about the information warfare. (Kagami not playing is probably the biggest factor in Himuro deciding not to go.) According to his public instagram, Kise is watching Kaijo’s game from the bleachers instead of the bench, eyes off a pile of overdue autographs in his lap. 

There’s a video floating around Facebook, a grainy pan-and-scan that was adapted from broadcast footage. Kise taking off his jacket as he went back onto the court in the semifinals against Seirin. The whole time they’ve known each other, even before the basketball club when they were at least in the same class (though Murasakibara wasn’t lying after the popsicle celebration when he said he didn’t remember this, he is more than willing to extrapolate backwards uncharitably), Kise has been complaining about this. He probably doesn’t mean it, given how many other things he doesn’t mean by his own admission, including some public displays of affection he has performed towards these girls.

And almost a year later, it’s getting views. Again. It’s like people are looking through all the related videos after they click on the trending upload of “Nakamura Shinya celebrating the 10/10 glasses day”.

Nobody is telling the same story about Yosen. Why not? Is it because of their height? The two new starting members this year should have changed that, neither is scouted for height and they’re in relatively height-independent positions anyway. Maybe it’s just because they can crush any small-name school and are practically guaranteed to get into the sweet sixteen, only to fall apart against the real threatening competitors. Strategy is the main problem. Murasakibara knows he’s bad at it. That was part of why he assented more easily to watch games at the Interhigh. He never needed to keep track of his stamina before high school, until Kiyoshi forced him to jump just enough times for Kuroko of all people to waste him. 

Aomine had always seemed out of it when he raved about the mystical properties of the Zone. Now Murasakibara knew for sure he was full of shit. What good did it do to actually focus for once on everything relevant in the game, if he was too weak by then to do anything like vindicate Himuro’s tears? Should he be more like Kagami and surpass his limits on some other axis, because he cared that much about not letting his teammates lose? 

When he gets out of the showers, he puts on street clothes instead of his team jacket. The sweatpants will better absorb the lingering drops of water, anyway. (Since this isn’t his own school, he doesn’t have his personal towel that’s actually an adequate size to cover all the spots.) He tucks his damp hair into a knit beanie and then it’s time to lift his suitcase out of the locker.

At the exit of the building, they’re already waiting for him, Liu with his suitcase and Himuro with a Yosen duffel. “It was good that you brought your luggage too,” Liu says. “Now there will be no need to revisit that hotel with their pulp-free excuse for orange juice. If you’ll allow it I will take yours back to the house as well.”

Murasakibara tilts his head, trying to see how Liu will be able to hold two suitcases, one in each hand. “How will you get inside? I didn’t think his parents would ever leave their door unlocked when they’re not even around all the time themselves.”

“There’s one spare key besides mine, I gave that to him,” Himuro explains brightly. He has on black stylish gloves this time, making it hard to see when he gestures with his similarly black leather wallet. The jingle of coins and keys is easier to hear.

Liu juts out his hip, where a keychain is threaded through the belt loop. Fukui had shown him that this was cool. Murasakibara shoves his suitcase over at Liu with rather more force than strictly necessary, which is something that he does a lot. That’s probably the main reason he isn’t trusted with the key. Liu with his slightly smaller hands must be much better at operating a lock, though all their hotels have used keycards so Murasakibara wouldn’t actually know. He’s also never been invited to the house of Liu’s host family.

“He took some of my stuff out of the bag too, so I’ll be putting most of the decorations in here.” Himuro pats the duffel. “Atsushi, could you carry the shopping bags with food?”

Murasakibara shrugs. “Sure. You’re starting at Top World, right?”

“Read my mind!” Himuro smiles. “Let’s go.”

“Farewell,” Liu says. Murasakibara doesn’t understand why. Fukui didn’t teach him that one. They walk together for several more steps before Liu actually has to part ways with them, since it’s not like the shop was deliberately chosen to be as far as possible from Himuro’s house.

A few minutes pass before Himuro breaks the silence. “You know, Atsushi, I’m not really sure what we should do about the cake.”

“I hope we’re gonna eat it eventually,” Murasakibara says without thinking, and Himuro makes a small noise. Murasakibara looks down to check. It does seem like a laugh, the kind where he muffles his mouth with his fist, even though the fabric of his glove should definitely feel cold against his face.

“Yeah,” Himuro says, his voice still high for that moment. “It’s just,” and he manages to keep talking, a little lower, even as they have to shuffle aside into single file for a group of three girls. “I was figuring that I should share the way Christmas was back in America with everyone, right?” 

Murasakibara has never been more certain, before hearing him say this sentence, that Himuro has no distinct memories of growing up in Japan, given that he thinks of Christmas as something to share with everyone. None of the four elder Murasakibara siblings had any investment in the holiday within their own household. They would always go out on dates, or at least outings with close-knit friend groups. By the time that Murasakibara Atsushi is old enough to remember, he was big enough for his parents to comfortably leave him home alone while they went out themselves for some rare time as a couple, and so the youngest son would celebrate by himself in the candy aisle. “Okay, I guess, that works,” he says, figuring that his voice doesn’t sound impressed, and not caring.  
Himuro’s face is in his field of vision again now that they move to walk next to each other again. “So that stuff the stores will be selling right now in Tokyo, labelled as Christmas Cake, that will be different from what we actually had – I’ve never eaten it before, actually, I wouldn’t know what’s good.” Murasakibara had thought that was the whole reason he had been invited along. Himuro has always taken responsibility too much, though.

“Then it sounds like you don’t actually want to get a Christmas Cake.” As always happens when Himuro is talking about food, Murasakibara’s words are about eighty percent influenced by his own preferences for food. He’s never had Christmas Cake before either. So much more expensive, gram for gram, than cookies and other seasonal products, and the sharing properties didn’t outweigh that consideration, not for him. “It’s a snack, so if you don’t think it’s going to be good, there’s no point, right?”

Himuro sighs. “I know that… but what will we do instead? We had fruitcake at home, but nobody ever liked that, and I have no idea where we’d get the same fruit in winter here anyway.”

Murasakibara isn’t entirely sure what fruitcake actually is. However, he knows roughly how high the standards are for fruit in Himuro’s California household. “Not at Top World,” he says.

“So if we don’t get a fruitcake, and we don’t get a Christmas cake, then what do we do? Pie probably isn’t going to hold up as well; I wouldn’t put it past some people to start throwing them around and stuff. Something that everyone shares would be in the holiday spirit, though.”

Himuro seems sort of hunched over in thought. His attitude about perfection through skill can yield great results, but it also gets him down. Murasakibara decides he should think too, if only to keep Himuro from ruminating.

“Were you definitely going to buy something, or cook it yourself?” he asks first.

After a moment’s thought, Himuro says “I was thinking we could cook a couple things and then get other stuff ready-made. Like the turkey, there are a few ovens in my house but nowhere near enough to cook it all.” Murasakibara decides not to break it to him that this too is unfamiliar in Japan. He doesn’t want to give him ideas. Fried chicken gets all over the place. Himuro won’t be particularly prepared to clean it up, either, since his neighborhood in America doesn’t have all that much high-fat batter, even at the fast food restaurants.

“You should be fine with getting the candies that way. Some of the pastries would be really annoying to make. Cookies from stores are okay, too. Except gingerbread,” he says as an acrimonious aside. “That should be fresh. By the time you buy it, the corners get all hard and crumbly.” They’re crushed in your hands like your dreams.

Himuro nods. “I know those iced cookies you like. They’ll probably be in stock with seasonal stuff.” He pauses, probably frowning. “What about the cake, then, Atsushi?”

“Well, I don’t see why you can’t just bake a big American style cake and decorate it with Christmas stuff. You already know all about baking a birthday cake or whatever, right?”

Himuro raises his arm and snaps his fingers. “Brilliant,” he exclaims in English. “Nobody will be thinking about what’s inside as long as it tastes good, and we can still show them all sorts of holiday designs. You’re a genius, Atsushi.”

Murasakibara doesn’t look at him. “Then it’s settled.”

For the remainder of the walk there, they talk about which of the side dishes they should cook. Himuro comes up with a couple things like mashed potatoes and boiled asparagus. Murasakibara doesn’t bother mentioning that he plans to be in another room during that last one. They’re both pretty sure that Top World will have everything that they want except for some of the bread rolls, and Himuro can get that the next day when he picks up the turkey.

Supermarkets like Top World are so much nicer to visit than convenience stores like FamilyMart. The lights are lower, and the ceilings are much higher. Murasakibara likes to reach out over the divider and pick up goods from the neighboring aisle. In the larger store, the employees are less likely to see and scold him. Himuro is somewhere else getting decorations.

They meet up at the register. Murasakibara rummages through Himuro’s bags to lift out a large bag of chocolates. “Muro-chin, no, don’t get large bags here. If you need that many, get more small ones. They’re actually cheaper. That’s why they have the display by the checkout line but not the prices.”

“Is that so,” Himuro says. The words are chips of ice. He’s probably thinking about burning down the whole building.

The clerk nearby says “If you’d please put the products onto the belt so they may be scanned.” She’s probably mad at Murasakibara for pointing this out. Serves them right though for always overcharging him when he asked about bulk box orders of Maiubo.

Himuro insists on paying for everything with his credit card, leaving him plenty of time to rearrange the decorations in his duffel bag, while Murasakibara has to put all of his tiny coins back into his wallet. One ten-yen piece is abandoned altogether on the floor. Himuro takes one shopping bag for himself, too, a box of eggnog weighing down the bottom and then a case of individually wrapped candy canes on top.

“I’m going to put them in a big bowl,” Himuro says about the candy canes as they’re walking outside. “The good news is that we can snack on these beforehand since there’s no particular round number we need. Do you want one now?”

Murasakibara doesn’t like this idea so much, not least because Kise is invited (probably) and is going to lick one then put it back (definitely). Himuro is unwrapping the plastic on a stick for himself. Impressively, he can do that with gloves on.

“More for me,” Himuro says lightly, and Murasakibara hates that, because it’s definitely just a polite set phrase, Himuro is self-conscious enough to only have one. Then why is he relaxed enough to stick the candy cane into his mouth curved end first, when the U will make contact with the whole breadth of his tongue? How is he going to hold it in there the whole time without the candy snapping in half and scoring the roof of his mouth with sharp edges? When did he practice enough so he could talk like this and people still understand his voice, find the lilt charming? Even his lip gloss is unmussed, when he hasn’t reapplied any makeup for almost three hours. 

This is setting aside the abhorrence of mint as a flavor, an abomination to the nostrils. Murasakibara knows that there have been a few abortive experiments with candy canes from other materials, but they aren’t imported to Japan very often, and Himuro seemed to see some value in the popular red-and-white peppermint pattern anyway.

When the moment has passed, Murasakibara asks, “Are you going to have a tree?”

“Nope,” Himuro says. “It’s for the best; we wouldn’t have space for a really nice one. Besides, they probably won’t take the one at Yosen down until partway through January, like last year.”

Murasakibara is a little concerned about the ceilings in Himuro’s house, if there isn’t enough space for a tree. “People wouldn’t be putting presents underneath it anyway, so I guess there’s no point.”

“That’s right,” Himuro says. “Most of the stuff I got should go nicely hung up on the walls. There’s not much decoration in the house.”

“You do have bedrooms, right?” Murasakibara isn’t a hundred percent sure that he could put it past Himuro to assume that his guests owned sleeping bags. On the other hand, they’d already set out on a sleepaway trip in a hotel with beds.

“Of course. We decided you can sleep in the master bedroom, Liu is in the actual guest room, and then I’m in my room.”

“Alright,” Murasakibara says with a lilt. The master bedroom might be kind of weird, especially if Himuro’s mom still uses that perfume, but he’s sure down for a two-person bed. That’s way preferable to dangling his oversized arms off a twin bed, or dragging them along the floor when he’s sleeping on the average futon for that matter.

“There’s the pool table and the karaoke machine in the basement. I figured we’d put the most actual decorations in the living room on the first floor. Do you think people will be comfortable just sitting on the couches, or should I get the bar stools out of the basement?”

“That depends,” Murasakibara says. “You probably know whether or not Kagami will make a mess—” Relative to the average Japanese person he’s an oaf, but Murasakibara is immensely jealous of his ability to hold a fork. (Himuro has probably seen Kagami do that, even more often than Murasakibara has seen Himuro.) “Are you going to invite Mine-chin, though? Because, him, I don’t know about.” Momoi has been complaining a lot less about him skipping practice, ever since they started their second year of high school, but he still tugged restlessly sometimes at the collars of his shirts, and she had to hem them.

“So you think that might be an even bigger problem than the seating…” Himuro goes hmm. “Maybe I can set up the card tables instead, and we can play a big game like Old Maid as people are filtering in.”

“Sacchin will go crazy about that.” He remembers the games of parliament hosted by Kise.

“Right.” Himuro’s voice dips in self-deprecation. “That will be good, since I can’t keep an eye on every guest at once.” 

Murasakibara realizes that Himuro didn’t actually answer the question of whether Aomine was invited. He can’t blame him. The generation of miracles is pretty much a package deal, but their respective teammates are also package deals, and for example if Nebuya is there, the pool table is in serious danger.

Murasakibara has an eerie feeling that Akashi might even know about this party already. Maybe that’s just because of his face that seems to know everything.  
Soon they make it to the house. Two stories, just like the house in California. They have installed the typical Japanese intercom, though, and Himuro presses that button. “Liu? We’re here.”

Himuro has his own key and doesn’t actually need to wait for Liu to let him in, simply wanted to inform him. He shifts both bags to one arm and unlocks the door. To Murasakibara it’s like a magic trick.

Liu has been waiting for them on the couch, cell phone in his lap and open notebook on the end-table. “Welcome,” he says, briefly averting his eyes from the Chinese drama on the plasma big-screen. (Himuro’s parents must still shell out for satellite TV.) “Have you acquired all you need?”

“Yeah, this should be everything. That we buy today and not the day-of, at least.” Himuro hefts his duffel bag. “You can put this in the cabinets over the utilities, and then the candy goes in the drawer under the sink.”

Liu nods as he stands up. “I have put away all of my personal possessions. Murasakibara’s bag is in his respective room as well, though I did not touch it beyond that.” 

Liu knows where everything is already; as soon as the three of them progress into the kitchen, he opens the door of a high-mounted cabinet without turning his head. There’s no need for a third pair of clumsy hands. Murasakibara lets go of all his bags over the kitchen table. 

“I’m going upstairs.”

He finds the master bedroom right at the end of the hallway, and his purple suitcase is in the doorway. Right next to the bathroom; excellent. That makes it much easier to unzip the front pocket and take out what he’ll install next to the sink as soon as possible: his own tube of toothpaste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The complete fic should be posted by the end of September. I've got a complete draft and will simply be making slight revisions as each chapter is posted. I welcome feedback.
> 
> If you have very strong preferences about types of endings in the stories you read, this may not be the fic for you.


	2. Resistance

# December 24th

Murasakibara stretches his arms; his shoulders are sore from dunking so much on Shutoku. “Yay, we won,” he says.

He says “we” liberally. He can't deny that Liu helped a lot with blocking. Murasakibara's own legs aren't so sore, and he has no complaints about following Liu and Himuro walking down the steps, though he's not quite sure why they're going out the crowded front entrance instead of the back door, much closer to the locker room. His whole frame still feels animated, and his words bounce too.

“Hey, Muro-chin, can we get snacks on the way home to celebrate?” A smile warps Murasakibara's lower lip enough that his tongue presses into his salivary glands.

Liu looks up from his phone and holds out the screen to Himuro. From up here, behind Liu, Murasakibara can't really see. “The other two regulars refused,” Liu says.

Himuro clicks his tongue ruefully. “I knew I shouldn't have told them the story about her studying here during college while Coach was in the room to fact-check.”

"Everyone laughed at the part where Masako-chin ripped away the futon and got them shivering all over, though." Murasakibara chimes in because he remembers how the story ends, even though he isn't sure about the identity of the main character.

Around this time, the chill of the air reminds him that Himuro ushered them out while they were still in their team jackets instead of coats. “Anyway,” continues Himuro in the quick, practiced mode of speech he’s been using so much lately, “there won't be time if we go all the way into a store."

That's when Murasakibara puts it together. "We're going to pick up Alex? Already?"

Himuro nods. "She'd wanted to watch today's game, actually. Her flight just got delayed."

Liu looks back at his phone. “She will reach the baggage carousel in short order. I will tell her that we are getting a taxi.”

Himuro reaches a street corner and comes to a stop. His hands are in his pockets. “This is the best place to hail one. There's even a food stand here where we're waiting - can I get you anything, Atsushi?”

Murasakibara raises his arm and squints into the street traffic. “Get something with salt, or licorice.”

\---

In just a few minutes a black car pulls up. Liu gets in shotgun and recites the airport followed by the terminal as Himuro gets in the same side as Liu and Murasakibara sits down behind the driver. Classical music blares from the cab’s tinny speakers. They skip a beat whenever the driver executes a hairpin turn, which is often. Murasakibara distracts himself by reading the profile printed underneath the driver's headrest, featuring his full name, favorite food, and two hobbies. One stands out: shrine viewing.

Murasakibara leans on the back of the driver’s seat and makes an educated guess: “Are you from Kyoto or something, Tomimura-ojiisan?”

“Yes, actually, how did you know?” He says it in the distinctive regional dialect, settling the question decisively.

“I have my ways,” says Murasakibara, smirking, and he puts his hands behind his head, though his elbow leaves a smudge against the window.

"Seriously, though.” Himuro has turned to face Murasakibara. While his right hand still rests in his own lap, his left hand brushes against Murasakibara’s ribcage. The contact doesn’t hurt at all; his nails are tightly clipped and buffed, like Midorima’s. He uses a thick coat of nail polish, unlike Midorima. “I'm really curious,” says Himuro.

Murasakibara’s teeth dig into his lip hard enough to hurt as he racks his brain for the answer to that question, which is, “Aka-chin complains on the phone all the time about his chauffeur.”

\---

Mr. Tomimura manages to get results with his driving style. By the time the car pulls up to the curb of the airport, Himuro can already see Alex's distinctive blonde, buxom silhouette through the high glass windows of the airport, apparently, because he shouts with a wide smile, “She's here,” and he presses the button to open the car door.

“Good evening!” Alex yells. She stands with her hands on her hips and is wearing a light blue parka with the price tag still on it. Himuro uses both arms to hold her single suitcase, which is missing a wheel, and he puts it in the trunk of the taxi.

Liu hasn’t moved from his shotgun seat. While Alex is still outside, he makes the request: “Matsudaya, please.”

“They’re still open this time of night? That’s great,” says Alex. “Tatsuya was telling me all about the type of onabe they make there, and it also sounds like their appetizers are pretty great?”

“I guess,” says Murasakibara. For all he knows, Matsuda Aya could be the name of a classmate or something. It’s bad enough that Murasakibara will have to eat somewhere he’s never been before, but he’s also fairly sure that Liu and Himuro have already gone there without him.

Alex is speaking enthusiastically, though Murasakibara can’t properly hear her until she’s gotten back into the car. Himuro follows her inside and closes the door behind them, returning to his seat behind Liu. Alex has her arm around his shoulders. Meanwhile, her legs protrude over Murasakibara’s lap.

When the four of them get out of the car and walk into the restaurant, Murasakibara finds himself sitting on the cushion closest to the exit. Alex and Liu sit on either side of him, with Himuro the closest to the next booth, hanging their jackets on hooks over the partition between two seating areas.

After the server puts down four glasses of ice water and walks away, Alex actively waggles her eyebrows; she’s so smug about this next announcement that she slips back into English. “I brought souvenirs, you know.” She places a white paper bag on the edge of the table, a thin wooden area not occupied by the flat metal surface of the central stove. “Tatsuya, these headphones are for you.”

Himuro makes a series of exuberant English remarks about the high specs of the phones as he stands up and puts them into the pockets of his hanging coat. Before sitting back down, he puts one arm around her shoulders. “Thank you, really. I’d hug you if we weren’t in front of everybody.”

“I’m glad it’s a hit,” says Alex, and her teeth are shining, much like the next gift, a bottle which catches the lamplight as she lifts it across the table. “This is Wei’s cologne.”

“I am in your debt,” says Liu, who tucks the bottle into his pants pocket.

“And here are those chocolate covered brands of potato chips and pistachios and pretzels for Atsushi!” Three brightly colored foil bags intrude into Murasakibara’s field of vision. Alex is pushing them at him with both hands. “I heard you were so curious about them.”

“Yeah…” He had used Facebook for the first time in three months to comment on Himuro’s shared version of the post where Alex photographed this brand. Murasakibara decides that being annoyed with Alex is officially more effort than it is worth, as it’s likely to result in a retraction of the gift. “Thanks,” he says. As he grips the first bag, the chips inside don’t crumble under the pressure, because the chocolate coating has more integrity than that.

 “I’m disappointed to be sitting across from you, Alex,” says Liu in a low-pitched voice. “You have such excellent taste in scents, I would like to properly appreciate yours.”

Murasakibara’s line of sight is still naturally fixated on the customer across from himself: Himuro, who has a glass of water to his lips that he had almost completely pulled away, only to raise it higher and take another huge sip.

“Well, before you get ahead of yourself, you should know I only kiss girls and children.” Himuro’s body sways a little as Alex has nudged him in the shoulder. She’s shaking her head. “Tatsuya is eighteen now! He’s practically an adult getting ready for college and everything.”

“Murasakibara is only seventeen,” says Liu.

“Tatsuya is telling me all the time about how fast his reflexes are.” Alex raises her arm towards his head; sure enough, Murasakibara is swaying away from the motion, deftly. She doesn’t follow him. “He’d definitely dodge me by the time I got my mouth all the way up there.”

Murasakibara has never thought before about the mechanics involved in dodging unwanted kisses specifically. Momoi was usually the main target for that line of attack. People offering unsolicited affection to him, on the other hand, tended to stretch their arms towards him when they were standing up and he was sitting down. As Alex’s fingers finally brush the fringes of his hair, Murasakibara wonders if Okamura has been watching the winter cup at all, if he’ll cry at the sight of Alex doling out her affections to the Yosen boys on the bench. Murasakibara hasn’t asked him.

“Yeah, he’s still superb in our games,” Himuro says, using an English adjective that Murasakibara actually doesn’t understand, though it’s preferable to being called a monster. “We won again today, against Shutoku.”

“Which team is that?” Alex asks.

“Mido-chin is on it,” Murasakibara contributes.

“The shooting guard from Teiko?” Alex puts too much emphasis on the first syllable of the school’s name. “I guess you have to guard him really closely, Atsushi. Especially if he still has that sharp-eyed friend setting him up God knows where on the court.”

“Oh, yeah.” Himuro laughs here, deliberately, ungloved fist over his glossy mouth. He has a lot of practice timing himself and not interrupting the flow of a sentence. “Kazunari is still in the picture.”

 Murasakibara starts thinking, determined to recall when the hell “Kazunari” happened, but stops himself when his wandering elbow crumples the corner of the chocolate covered pretzel bag. Much sharper than necessary, he interjects, “If you jump fast enough to block Takao’s pass, or Mido-chin’s shoot, then it’s pointless even if the course was perfect.”

“Insight is the easiest way to stop Murasakibara, not numbers.” Liu says this with a smile so thin that he must know full well he’s implying Murasakibara isn’t intellectually inclined, which is in its own way totally pathetic, because he must not have figured out that Murasakibara doesn’t care at all what people think of him. “Allocating more members against him will not end well for the limited forces left to deal with other Yosen players, such as me.”

The match certainly hadn’t ended well for Shutoku. As Murasakibara tries to read the menu, visions of orange jerseys swim before his eyes. There are too many choices for Murasakibara to prefer any particular menu item as long as Liu fails his argument in favor of deep fried pork, which is ridiculously stupid, because the layer of batter is inevitably going to crumble and float in the soup of the onabe.

Murasakibara officially gives up on reading when he spills water over the pages. He knows what he’s choosing if he can’t drink and read at the same time. He’s nothing at all like Otsubo Tae, that manager who handed her notebook to an underclassman because she didn’t want to stain the pages with her tears, and “we’ll need it next year, you know, there’s no way it’ll end like this”. Miyaji Yuya stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder, nothing to say, because what could he say that Okamura hadn’t? She already knew that she was “just getting started” and should “do her best”. The real question was who would say those words next year. Midorima, still taller than anyone on the team? Takao on the bench, legs covered in bruises, Kimura hunched in front of him?

“Alex is the guest and all,” says Himuro, smiling widely. “Let’s just do whatever she wants.”

“Fine with me!” declares Alex with a wink. “I do get a kick out of the look on the waiter’s face when I’m the one talking to them.”

“In my experience, too,” says Liu, “that does never get old.” The Chinese exchange student lets a smirk overtake his disagreement, and he maintains this good-humored expression throughout the ordering process. After the waiter is gone and a different server brings out their first appetizer, Liu gets more thoughtful. “I must say, Alex, I’d expected you to not get French fries while you were outside of America for once.”

“Come on, Wei, don’t tell me you expect these to be the same thing you’d get at Scottish Dimey’s!” Alex spreads her hands to indicate that the two restaurants are like apples and oranges. “Maji Burger, that’s a place with pretty much the same soggy potatoes and table salt that the kids on my club team are getting every Thursday evening.”

“Man,” says Murasakibara, “sometimes I wish that Masako-chin would only let us practice once a week.”

Alex swishes her glass as she corrects him. “Once every week,” she says. “This is my favorite batch of kids ever.”

 “You say that every year,” says Himuro, smiling.

Murasakibara chimes in, “So you love them because they don’t need to practice much. They’re really strong, right?”

Alex starts laughing. A beverage sputters from her lips, probably from the blue bottle of Ginga-Kogen beer knocked over by her fist pounding the table. Himuro puts his hand on her shoulder, pushing her back until her neck is vertical again. Murasakibara has two French fries in his mouth; he decides to add a third. He doesn’t need to take action, after all. Alex clearly has the situation under control, breathing through her nose, wiping her cheeks with steady hands.

“No,” says Alex.

Now Murasakibara is the one choking. Himuro stands up and places his fingers along Murasakibara’s jaw. Murasakibara spits onto his plate, losing all three of the French fries.

“It was only two weeks ago that Madrid made a basket past the three point line for the first time. I keep telling Mrs. Sanchez, you can’t let these kids use a five foot hoop forever, they get too used to dunking.” She’s shaking her head, smiling harder than ever. “And as for Hyun? Keeps trying to do those smooth fakes you see on TV. It’s the funniest thing. Like, kid! Get the fundamentals down straightforward first, would it kill you?”

“No, it won’t kill them,” says Himuro. He laughs, and then continues. “There aren’t going to be any more kids getting hurt on your watch.”

“But aren’t their feelings going to get hurt if they lose?” asks Murasakibara. He looks at Alex, who has her hair in a ponytail and doesn’t betray a lick of pain on her face. “What’s so fun about coaching if you don’t win any games?”

“Uh, literally everything else, I guess?” Her voice is bright in spite of rising into a question. She starts rattling off a litany of virtues – loyalty, motivation, spirit – in English.

As the conversation gets more predictable, Murasakibara determines that he won’t choke on any additional French fries and is therefore perfectly justified in tearing his eyes away from the American. That’s what Okamura tried to teach him about paying attention to an opponent: determine not just their ability to offend, but his own ability to continuously defend.

“You need to conserve your energy, press your foot on the ground just as hard as necessary to jump the height of your opponent,” Okamura had said. “It’s the same way with eating.”

“I don’t think about eating that way either, though~?” replied Murasakibara. “It’s just like, what snacks do I want, and then I go get that.”

“Heat capacity”, there’s a virtue that’s easier to understand than “tenacity”. Every physical substance has a specific number of calories that would raise the body’s temperature one degree – though he’s frustrated by the knowledge that this is an oversimplification, that the complex inner structure of the object is elided by the bomb calorimeter. Murasakibara understands the way food feels in his mouth, tastes on his tongue, but not the way his own body transforms the calories into energy. He wonders if there’s a food he can eat that would make him warmer than Kagami, make him a person who never hated basketball. The only sure thing in his physics research so far is that no caloric intake is a substitute for the increased efficiency of pointing your toes towards the basket when you make a shot.

 “I really hope your metabolism doesn’t stay fast forever,” said Fukui, smiling with his eyes shut.

In the present, the main course arrives, and Murasakibara loses his ability to pay attention to more than two things at once.

# July 4th

Though the blinds in this room are pulled down, zebra rays of light filter through, and the sun is hotter here than any part of Japan he’s ever visited. Only Hawaii comes close, but there isn’t any mitigating humidity this time. (He’s going to hear more than he ever wished to learn about the drought, before this trip is over.)

“Rise and shine!” An unfamiliar female voice says the English words. Murasakibara doesn’t really hear the phrase coherently, and he reckons the syllables into something more familiar.

“Raisins?”

“We do have raisin bran,” continues a male voice in Japanese. Mr. Himuro, probably. “From what Tatsuya told us, though, we thought fresh lucky-charms would be more your speed.”

He’s absolutely right. Those are the exact words Murasakibara needed to hear so he’d drag himself out of bed. Those virtually aren’t manufactured in Japanese factories, and if his experience with Frosted Flakes is any indication, fresher will be way better. He crushes his pillow in his fist and pushes down, rotates his hips enough that his feet fall firmly planted on the carpet (which has curls that feel distinct through his fairly thin socks), and lifts himself up into a sitting position. The blue LED display of the digital clock on the wall is really doing a number on his eyes that are already sore; nevertheless he’s pretty sure of making out two lines, and so he grasps at straws.

“Isn’t it almost midnight or something?”

“It’s already eleven in the _morning_ ,” says Himuro in the hallway, and he has a white towel wrapped around his waist. He’s just blow-dried his hair, but his eyebrows have this faint feathered quality. This must be what he looks like when he hasn’t done all his makeup yet. Just his skin is conditioned, enough for the beauty mark to stand out against his pale face. “In half an hour, my grandfather and his brothers will be here.”

“I heard from Kairu-jiichan that his daughter and her kids can definitely make it,” Mrs. Himuro chimes in, “and they’ll definitely be competing with you for the snacks.”

“C’mon, Atsushi,” says Mr. Himuro in English with a heavy wink. “You snooze, you lose.”

Murasakibara extends his arm and manages to pull his suitcase towards himself so he can pull out clothes without standing up from the bed. “Okay, okay.”

Dressed, he walks into the kitchen area, which doesn’t have chairs and a table so much as a series of barstools encircling a counter, where there’s a bowl of lucky charms. When Murasakibara sits on one of these stools, he’s only the tallest person in the household by ten centimeters. The entire south wall of the house, in this room, consists of glass doors leading out to the patio, where a black barbecue stands cheekily next to several brightly colored cardboard boxes. Murasakibara spoons cereal into his mouth, but for lack of nutritional information to read, his eyes feast on the boxes’ labels. The cautionary crimson color of the text is clearly visible through the glass; he just can’t read the letters.

“They’re fireworks,” says Mrs. Himuro. (Murasakibara thinks that she’s proud, but English grammar doesn’t make these emotional nuances as immediately obvious.) “We’ll be lighting them around nine.” She elbows him as she adds, “At night.”

Thrown thoroughly off balance by his hostess’s wandering arm, Murasakibara barely catches himself with one hand on the edge of the granite countertop, surprisingly cold and smooth. He decides this is as good an excuse as any to stand up and pour himself a second bowl of lucky charms. Murasakibara is halfway through his third bowl when a woman with glasses walks through the door and makes a beeline for him. “Hello! I’m Maria. It’s so nice to meet you, Atsushi-kun.” Her three children filter inside, drawing Murasakibara’s eyes away from her face. “Remind me, just how long have you known Tatsuya?”

“Who?”

The woman gives him a withering look, and combined with the glasses, he finally realizes who she reminds him of: Midorima, when they first met and Murasakibara didn’t know off the top of his head what the word “Libra” meant.

“Um,” says Murasakibara. “Since last year. Like, almost exactly a year? Because he said it was such a shame that I couldn’t come last year.”

“I’m sure he said that,” the woman lilts. Her emphasis was on the word “said”. “He hasn’t been back in America until now. There’s so much catching up to do.”

“Right,” says Murasakibara, jumping on an area that’s a little more familiar to him. “He’s gonna make pasta out of a box in the kitchen with olive oil again, and—”

“Other familiar foods,” Maria finishes. “I know. You can’t beat the Mexican that they have on the restaurants off Wells Drive, the one where you can see the ocean right out the window…”

She makes eye contact with Murasakibara, which requires her to roll her shoulders back a little bit. He says, “Uhuh.”

Maria suddenly looks very disappointed, and she says, “Anyway, I’ve got to go see my favorite cousin.”

Mr. Himuro is suddenly shouting jovially: “I’m your only cousin!” His voice rings out from the other side of the living room. Murasakibara watches Maria walk towards him. Mr. Himuro and his son are busy setting up a billiard table.

Murasakibara isn’t in the mood to learn a new game. He’s not sure he could even get himself into the mood for air hockey. Mrs. Himuro is in his peripheral vision, and Murasakibara turns to her. “Can I help you with the cooking?”

Her face is nothing like the last time he saw her. She might as well be a mug of butter after he put it into the microwave to melt and drizzle over popcorn. “You bet, Atsushi,” says Mrs. Himuro. She gestures at the three children who have gathered on one of the two long couches. “If they seem like a handful, just wait until my side of the family starts trickling in.”

In the bright lighting of the kitchen, Murasakibara can finally see that Mrs. Himuro has a beauty mark in the same place as her son, underneath her right eye. Her hair doesn’t hide her left eye, though; it’s all gathered up in two buns that are tight like bundles of straw.

“One sec, I need something first.” Murasakibara takes a hair tie out of some messy pile on the countertop, including restaurant receipts and refrigerator magnets. “Okay. Now I’m ready.”

Surprisingly to Murasakibara, they prepare lunch and dinner almost simultaneously. It’s all cold food, the vegetables crisp and the meat dried. “Even when it’s not summer we don’t use the oven that much,” says Mrs. Himuro. “To save electricity.”

While he finely chops a very small onion with a knife, Murasakibara peers into the living room, where a pool game is raging among Himuro, Maria, Mr. Himuro, and two of the children (a third child is on her phone). “Five people in a battle royale?” says Maria. “It’s basically basketball in reverse.”

“We could play three on three with Atsushi,” points out Himuro. With powder on his fingertips but not underneath his nails, his hand fits elegantly around the cue stick. Murasakibara’s hand would not. Murasakibara’s hand pushes chopped onion onto the floor, so Murasakibara breaks eye contact with Himuro and returns to cooking.

By the time the sun goes down, his head is really starting to hurt. Murasakibara has never tied up his hair for this long before, and now he knows why. He scratches the back of his neck, not just to be awkward but because the base of his scalp downright itches.

Himuro opens the door, letting in lots of smoke. “Hey,” he says, the English interjection. “We’re going to let off the purple ones soon.”

Mrs. Himuro gives Murasakibara a look. He’s not sure what it actually means, she’s not frowning or anything, but she would probably use words if she wanted to let him stay. Murasakibara stands up, bringing his head into the middle of the rising smoke wisps, and he follows Himuro into the patio. Out here is filled with an incomprehensible clamor of multisyllabic English interjections like “superb” and “brilliant”. By the time the third bomb has burst in air, Murasakibara accepts himself as having nothing to add.

When flashes of light reveal Himuro’s face, he’s frowning, the way he does when he aggressively plays basketball alone, practicing dunks usually, and hasn’t realized yet that Murasakibara is watching him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how "all updates completed before September ends" turned into "no updates until after October". I hope you enjoy this update.


	3. All I Want For Christmas Is You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna finish posting this fic before Christmas this year, so help me god.

# December 25th

Murasakibara is sitting on the floor of Himuro’s basement. The billiard table is a few inches below the height of his shoulders. White-striped balls are still a little hard to distinguish from this angle when closely clustered together. He tilts his head to verify the latest arrangement: An upward-pointing triangle with prime-numbered balls in the first three rows and the composite numbers forming the bottom two rows. It’s not really a game that he’s playing per se since he isn’t trying to crush some other person or even a record. (Akashi was always very adamant about the possibility of playing solitaire as a competition, though a lot less adamant after he started calling them all by surname again.) 

“Your wrist must be all better if you can reach around balls like that.”

That was said by Aomine, who is also here. He squirreled away four plates of food and has laid them out horizontally on a countertop, parallel to the couch that has swallowed him whole. The three slices of cake, in particular, are not something that Momoi would be happy to see. 

“Yeah, it doesn’t hurt or anything now.” Murasakibara is being precisely truthful insofar as none of these pool ball handling positions are causing him pain. If he stretches his hand out completely flat against a surface, during push-ups or something, he does experience a twinge of pain at the edges of the muscles, radiating out from his joint. The purpose of complaining about this is not clear to him, since everyone got thoroughly sick of him doing that. Oral painkillers take way too long to have an effect. Eating candy works faster, albeit on a different axis. 

“Having a sore arm really blows, you never realize how much stuff you do with it until you don’t anymore. Last summer sucked so much…” Aomine is looking philosophically at his own arm. Murasakibara looks too. There isn’t much for either of them to see under his three quarter length slate blue sleeves. 

“You thought it was a drag? Sacchin said that you were acting like nothing had changed.” 

“Satsuki should mind her own goddamn business and not stress out over me,” Aomine grumbles darkly, with his eyes cast away, and then he keeps not looking at Murasakibara even as his voice remains low and his forehead smooths out. “The thing is that I couldn’t feel the pain right. Like, I would steal some bento from Ryo and not even move out of the way when his chopsticks would poke me by accident.” 

Murasakibara holds up one hand clenched like he’s pulling chopsticks away, and then sweeps down his other arm. They don’t collide. “That doesn’t sounds like something that would happen by accident.” 

Aomine tilts his shoulders up and sees Murasakibara’s charade. “No, you’re doing it wrong. He was like—” In his signed version, his hands go between the chopsticks and the food right as Sakurai is moving down to pick something up. “My point is that I was being really stupid back then.” 

Murasakibara looks around the room for the hidden presence of Kuroko, just in case he chooses this time to reveal himself by saying “as opposed to stupid now, Aomine-kun?” 

“So, tomorrow we’ll be playing each other,” says Aomine. 

“We are?” Murasakibara says with open surprise. He knew that Seirin was still in the running, and with the obvious exception of Shutoku, so were the other schools with team members from the Generation of Miracles, including To’o. The tournament teams were down to the sweet sixteen, though, and Aomine has no incentive to make up this match-up. “Aw, no fair. I had to play against Mido-chin yesterday, and here’s Mine-chin all rested up.” 

“Hey,” Aomine says in a lower voice, quite worked up suddenly. “Hell no, I’ve been on the court every day this tournament, haven’t you been watching? Do you think I have that little stamina?” 

Murasakibara put his hand to his face as he thought. “Well. Towards the end of middle school, you were sleeping a lot, you know?” Murasakibara certainly was tired during the brief part of last year when Himuro challenged him to one-on-one matches after practice and volunteer activities were over for the evening, on street courts under no light save the moon. “And Sacchin was stepping up the information warfare this year…” He’s frustrated now that he and Himuro didn’t watch the first game just to make sure To’o didn’t go back on their word in the second half. 

“Sleeping in on the days we have games is like—” Aomine cuts himself off mid sentence as his forehead furrows up. “I don’t do that shit anymore, okay?” 

Since entering high school, during the vast majority of the time that the two boys spend together, Murasakibara has observed Aomine to be awake; on the other hand, these aren’t places that lend themselves to sleeping. As he tries to size up the situation, Murasakibara’s gaze slips down to the chunks of baked potato on Aomine’s plate. “I believe you,” he says as a distraction while he reaches out to take one piece. 

“I don’t miss the way Imayoshi would smile when he was actually angry, but man, Wakamatsu is such a hardass captain,” Aomine continues. He stares, deep and philosophical, at Murasakibara’s wandering hands. “He’d be so mad at me if I didn’t play in an official game, unless Satsuki planned for me to skip or something.” 

Murasakibara blinks, feeling something almost click in his head, and looks into Aomine’s eyes. “Like they’d scold you?” He can almost relate to that feeling of not wanting to get scolded. 

“You’d need really good reflexes to get away with just a scolding,” says Aomine with a smirk on his face suggesting precisely that strength of his own reflexes. “What’s the point of letting it come to that, though? Haven’t you been to joint training camps with Seirin? I don’t wanna lose to them, and the amount of practice—” He makes a big wobbly gesture with his hand. “It’s insane. Harasawa always draws the line at tripling. That flat-chested demon? Quintuples. Easy.” 

Murasakibara tilts his head to make sure that Aomine’s hand has the requisite five fingers and he hasn’t been replaced by some kind of alien. “I can get behind the coach knowing the best strategy during a game and all,” he says, slowly, “but you can’t seriously be saying that how much you practice effects whether you win, Mine-chin.” 

“Well,” says Aomine, quickly enough that Murasakibara wonders if he hasn’t entirely relearned how to feel pain, “Tetsu had to practice before he could use the Phantom Shot against you.” 

“That’s a different story,” snaps Murasakibara, and he takes an entire fistful of the remaining potatoes. As it turns out, his palm covers all of them, handily. “I’m not gonna lose to any of you ever again. Not to Kuro-chin, and not to Mine-chin either.” 

“Don’t steal my line, Murasakibara”, says Aomine, still smirking, before clapping him on the shoulder. 

“Atsushi, is this where you’ve been all this time?” Himuro has come almost all the way down the stairs. Following behind him are enough people to form a street basketball team. Kise, unsurprisingly, was not the first to arrive but is one of the most festive, dressed in a sharp red jacket. Takao leans along the banister playfully. Behind him is Midorima, and they’re both wearing hand knit sweaters. 

“Kise,” Aomine says from his position sprawled on the couch, “I am not getting up and playing pool against you.” Kise had already been holding up a finger, and he makes a crestfallen expression. 

“This isn’t a time for competition,” Himuro explains as he walks across the basement carpet to tap on the television mounted over the cabinet of DVD players and other machines. The hem of his pine green bolero flares above his waist, not quite covering the untucked red button-down or the black skinny jeans. 

“That’s right, that’s right!” Takao says. He’s pulled ahead of the other boys and jumps onto a beanbag chair. “We’re going to try out karaoke, it’s gonna be priceless, I can’t believe that we’ve never done this before.” 

Midorima adjusts his glasses. He can barely see in the dim orange light of the basement. “There were a few experiments with the activity during Teiko, in fact. We merely decided the activity wouldn’t be fruitful anymore.” 

“You mean that some of you who don’t understand the meaning of fun decided that,” says Kise with a pointed pout.

Murasakibara glances at the staircase. If it wouldn’t be such a chore to get out of this comfortable seat, he would get up and walk right out of this conversation, now. 

“Nose goes first,” Aomine says with a deep sigh, and then his arm flops over the general vicinity of his face. 

“No need, no need!” Takao waves his hand. “If I can volunteer, I’d seriously love to check out the selection you have. There are plenty of English and Japanese songs, you said, Himuro-san?” 

“Okay, it's finally set up!” Himuro turns back and flashes a smile; the ring and chain around his neck jangles. “Yup, you should be good with either. A couple of Spanish ones too, in case anyone is interested in something like Feliz Navidad.” 

Takao makes a selection and brings down the house. Kise is next, and he’s already gotten this song in the queue. There was no question. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.” He puts his hands over his heart. “The very next day, you gave it away.” He mimes a three point shot aimed into the trash. 

“I don’t understand why he always chooses this one,” Aomine says. “Kise, have you ever even been on a Christmas date?” 

It’s a catch twenty-two. Even Murasakibara, as much as he has given up on ever finding the socially correct answer to a question, can recognize the extent to which Kise is jammed. None of them can know whether Kise has loved and lost. Murasakibara really wouldn’t mind at all if Aomine lost again at some point in this tournament. The audience is awkwardly silent for the rest of Kise’s punchy, technically strong performance. Then Himuro turns to Murasakibara. 

“Atsushi, you should go next.” 

“What? But I don’t want to.” 

Murasakibara expected that it would be as simple as that. His whole life, he hasn’t done anything he didn’t want to do. Himuro has never pushed this type of trivial issue before, always wanting to make Murasakibara happy and often succeeding. Midorima is already bent over the remote, grumbling about how he has to do everything himself. 

Himuro tilts his head, though, and reiterates, “I’d really like to hear you sing. You’ve been down here all evening, you know? We’ve barely seen you, let alone heard you. Did you know Taiga thought at first you were just staying in the hotel room and not in the house at all?” 

Hearing that name is when Murasakibara clenches his fists and shouts. “Muro-chin, why don’t you understand? None of these tacky decorations and boring games and noisy people matter to me right now! I don’t care about any of these ways to waste time! All I want for Christmas is you!” 

The room is quiet for a moment after that, except for humming from the expensive central heating. Himuro smiles, and it’s a real smile of his. He didn’t grow up shutting his eyes for photos, so there’s no cue as easily distinguished as that, his faintly blue-powdered eyelids stay exposed the same amount, but his lips stretch so wide that his cheeks crinkle, and that crumples the edges of his eyeliner. For the rest of the day there’s a little chip in the black line, with another stray speck marring his skin covered in pale foundation. 

“Mariah Carey! That’s a great choice! I can’t believe nobody has done it yet! Though we should have the instrumental for the cover by My Chemical Romance if you want, too!” 

Midorima puts the remote back down on the table. Takao doubles over laughing. Kise starts to clap. He cheers repeatedly: “Murasakibara-cchi! Murasakibara-cchi!” It’s not a very good chant. The syllables don’t scan properly. 

“If you’re gonna be so sweltering about it all of a sudden… Can’t be helped.” Saying that in a more hesitant little voice than he’d like, Murasakibara takes the microphone, which is smaller than his hand. By the time he’s devised a grip that lets him hold the microphone steady without covering the speaker at all, the introductory instrumental has been going for a few seconds, and Aomine extends his leg just enough to nudge him. “The screen,” he mumbles, “the screen.” 

There’s a final shower of jingle bells, and then the lyrics start. The karaoke soundtrack for the first several lines is incredibly unhelpful, one loud burst at the beginning of each line. Murasakibara can’t bring himself to stretch out the vowels at all, so he keeps singing the first several lines too short, leaving an unseemly pause each time. 

“I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need. I don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree. I just want you for my own. More than you could ever know. Make my wish come true. All I want for Christmas…” 

He can’t even pretend to be capable of trilling “is you”. The full band surges out of the speakers, and Takao cheers, “woo!” Kise waves his hands to draw attention as the verse comes back; there’s a comprehensible melody during this part, which Murasakibara follows. 

“I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need. I-I care about the presents, underneath the Christmas tree. I don't need to hang my stocking there upon the farplace. Santa Claus won't make me happy with a d-doy on Christmas day.” 

Takao, grinning, elbows Midorima right in the stomach – not in the side; they’re sitting so close together, there’s not enough space to squeeze his arm there. Midorima shakes his head and tilts his wrist; the spoon in his hand catches the light. 

“I just want you for my own. More than you could, uh, know. Make my wish come true. All I want for Christmas is you…” 

With his hawk eye, Takao can probably see Himuro, who is sitting in the back; Murasakibara can’t, hasn’t looked at him this entire time. 

“You—” And he stops, without saying baby. “There’s no point,” he says in his actual voice. “These are the same words again.” He drops the mic, turns away to walk up the stairs, steps right past Momoi and Kuroko, takes the second flight of stairs, and goes to bed. 


	4. Demolition Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is special. While the previous chapter contains a line that was the premise of the fic and perhaps the story's climax, this chapter contains a line that is the story's denouement, comprising my actual thesis as an author.
> 
> Epilogue coming for Christmas.

# December 26th

Murasakibara is standing on the sidewalk, and he’s never been more immensely glad to be out of Akita for a while, because back there it would definitely be snowing right now. In Tokyo, they just get rain; light gray with pollution, but thin, keeping the pavement smooth, and it doesn’t soak all the way through the team jacket into his jersey. He can hold his head at an angle where the water only drips off his bangs down his nose or chin, and his cheeks are mostly dry.

The sound of the rain is louder than snow falling, on the other hand, and Murasakibara does eventually get sick of listening to the patter. He knocks on the door of Himuro’s house, and then he presses the intercom button to broadcast his voice. “Hey.” Both actions receive no answer. If he wants to get into this house, he will have to directly ask somebody.

He puts his hand into his pocket to retrieve his phone and finds that it’s wet. The screen is blurry – he navigates incorrectly into volume settings before reaching contacts. “Muro-chin” is at the top, but Murasakibara is pretty sure that Himuro won’t help him inside when Murasakibara is only trying to enter by himself because Himuro was shouting about “wanting to be alone” and ran right past the locker room for the exit. He scrolls down to “Liu-chin”, sends a single sentence of “lemme in”, and waits three minutes.

Liu opens the door. Earbuds are draped over his shoulders, the cords trailing down to the tablet in his other hand. The faintly glowing screen shows the login screen of the WeChat video conferencing application. With more than a little effort, Murasakibara brings his gaze back up to something much less colorful: Liu’s blanched face.

“You haven’t been crying, have you?” 

Liu frowns sharply and shakes his head, for better friction as he rubs his reddish eyes with the back of his sleeve. He hasn’t changed out of his team jacket, either.

“I have just strained myself, looking at this screen in the dark all the time. They have the lights in this house on a timer,” he says. Murasakibara, who has started to lean through the doorframe, nods in solidarity. Himuro’s parents are dead serious about saving energy. 

“I’m glad you’re doing okay,” Murasakibara says. “I really don’t want to hear any pretty words about regrets and doing better next year.” Okamura had said when they trained that Yosen would win the championship this year for sure. Murasakibara has no idea what information made him believe that. He’s forced to suspect that Fukui had the right idea telling the gorilla to give up on making sentimental speeches, and Okamura just said it for the sake of sounding captainlike.

“Why would I worry about the matter? The outcome is what it is.” Liu steps back up into the living room. 

“Well,” Murasakibara says, “it was kind of annoying to lose.” It’s more annoying taking off his basketball shoes, which need to be untied, so he pauses to concentrate on that task. “I would rather have won. And this is your last year, too~ Do you think it’ll look good on your record?”

Liu makes an unpleasant noise. Murasakibara stares at his face, where Liu’s teeth are much more prominent than usual, and realizes he’s laughing.

“I won’t be playing college basketball in Japan.”

Liu has sat down on the couch, hands folded in his lap, resting on the tablet in sleep mode. “There’s a team in China that will take almost any player who plays regularly on a Japanese team with consistent showings in the winter cup.” Murasakibara nods along with this at first. The system doesn’t sound entirely unlike that one school interested in the power forward at Kaulaie. “That is why I applied to Yosen, where height almost guarantees admission. Akita is not a place for making memories. I will return home to a stable career supporting Mother, Father, Huan, Chengyao, Junyong, and Peng.”

Murasakibara counts to himself and frowns. His voice pitches up with skepticism as he says, “There are only three other boys in the picture on the wall of your locker.”

Liu tilts his head, and at this angle he almost seems taller than Murasakibara. “Huan is fourteen, Chengyao is twelve, Junyong is ten, and Peng turns two in June,” he says.

Doing the mental math – he knows that unlike Himuro, Liu has been at Yosen all three years –Murasakibara sucks air through his teeth. “I’m glad he’s—” He searches for a socially appropriate word. “—healthy. He is, right? Are you feeding him lots of candy?”

“The answers to those questions are somewhat and no,” Liu says. “They don’t want to leave him alone long enough for a trip.”

“Yeah, airplanes are terrible,” says Murasakibara. The more that Liu reveals about this life of his, these unknowable activities where he’s about to return with no prospect of subsequent interaction, the weirder Murasakibara feels, and this also makes him think of the last time he got on an airplane, for the trip to California, so he asks, “Hey, is Muro-chin home yet?”

“Yes, he is,” says Liu. “He went upstairs and took a shower.” He maintains eye contact, importuning to Murasakibara that this is a very bad sign. Himuro has been an excellent host in all the traditional ways. He makes breakfast and sweeps and takes the last shower after all the hot water is out. Until now.

Murasakibara takes a moment to think about the best way to use this information. Then he says, “Well, I’m going to take a shower. See you in the morning, Liu-chin.”

Liu nods once and then immediately returns his gaze to the tablet in his lap, which lights back up. Murasakibara pivots to the stairs and ascends them. The traction of the smooth wood steps is poor under his athletic socks. He passes by the door labelled “TATSUYA”; it’s closed, so the sound of music playing in the room is very faint. Murasakibara decides he can get away with going right into the bathroom and fetching his pajamas afterwards. Liu is downstairs and everything.

The hot water feels better than expected on his skin. Murasakibara’s body really is disgusting, covered in sweat after the basketball game. He should have showered right away, in the locker room. When he leans against the wall as his legs sag, the grout of the tiles digs into his shoulder. After jumping to beat Wakamatsu for so many rebounds, Murasakibara’s knees are sore. He landed on his feet every time, as much as he wanted to catch himself with his arm.

Drying off, Murasakibara doesn’t find any injuries. He holds the towel loosely in one hand and steps across the carpet to his room. The towel falls out of his hand in the doorway, and then he grabs some pajamas from his open suitcase. It’s a good thing he has at least one sleeping outfit left without buttons. Murasakibara takes the other gift bag he bought at the mall out of his suitcase and goes down the hall back to Himuro’s room.

“Can I come in,” he asks.

The only answering voice is a crooning Gerard Way.

“I’m coming in anyway,” says Murasakibara, and he opens the door.

Murasakibara can never get over the way that this bedroom literally looks like something out of a magazine. Reusable thumbtacks in the walls support signed posters of athletes as well as actors and musicians. Himuro has his own lamps that are battery operated. The bookshelves and the dresser are host to all sorts of handy dandy knick-knacks: a record player, a radio, an address book. These surfaces have a periodic tendency to get covered in dust, so at times like this when there’s nothing else productive to do, Himuro is bent over the dresser, dusting, barefoot in boxer shorts and a red T-shirt. Himuro hasn’t done a particularly good job of cleaning up his makeup. There are black smudges on top of his ears, the ones that usually appear when he dabs his eyes with the backs of his hands, instead of chemically treated removal wipes. He washes his hands, of course. Just not his ears. 

“You’ve been crying, Muro-chin?” 

Himuro immediately grits his teeth. “I’m sure it’s a big surprise.” Being seen crying is one thing. Showing up after the fact and pointing it out after Himuro had tried to hide it, Murasakibara can understand why that’s more deeply frowned upon.

“It’s just so frustrating, you know?” Himuro barks a laugh. “His team is still in, and mine’s not. This was my last chance to play an official match against him, wasn’t it?”

Murasakibara holds up his free hand. “I did not,” he says, already feeling himself becoming harsh and not caring at all, “come in here to hear you talk about Kagami.”

“You don’t come in here to hear me talk often in general,” says Himuro. He’s put the dusting rag down, and he stands with both his arms crossed over his chest, not quite facing Murasakibara head on. “I don’t know why you’re making an exception now of all times.”

“Muro-chin,” he says, and stops, and starts again, and then he just raises his other hand, holding a thin ribbon handle, putting the base of the bag into the palm of his previously free hand. “I have a Christmas gift for you.” 

“What?” Himuro puts his hand on his hip, twists his torso to face this interloper, and his hair swishes. “Now?”

“When was I supposed to give it to you?” Himuro opens his mouth, so Murasakibara continues talking, faster. “On Christmas doesn’t count. I couldn’t give it to you then. Now it’s the day after Christmas. Tomorrow, it will be two days after Christmas.” Murasakibara knows he’s right. Math is his second-best subject.

Himuro puts his lips in a thin line. He had time to reapply lip gloss, apparently. Then he folds the cloth to put it away, walks back to sit at the head of the bed, and puts out his arm. That gesture means Murasakibara can sit at the foot of the bed. So he does that.

The paper inside the bag rustles as Himuro picks it up. He holds the present high near his head and shakes once. His brow is deeply furrowed. Murasakibara has seen this in movies; it’s probably a crankier version of the exaggerated face for that rhetorical question, “what could this possibly be?” He’s glad that he didn’t have it wrapped, because the shape would have been fairly obvious. Especially once the recipient picked it up.

Himuro’s visible eye widens as he takes in the cover of the record, blood-drenched man and woman about to kiss. Murasakibara hopes that means he’s excited. There’s not enough data to be certain, though.

“Reality check?” Himuro says, very slowly enunciating. That’s not a good sign. Those are English words that he should definitely know how to pronounce.

“It’s that teenagers song you like,” Murasakibara begins, and he’s picking up a little because this is the one part that he actually thought about in advance. He was so lucky, how he’d found it that day he was shopping for Akashi’s birthday party. “I know it smells kinda like Mountain Dew but don’t worry, those stains are all on the back. Look, look, don’t they basically blend into the tree leaves anyway?”

“Atsushi.” Himuro turns to face him, with a mouth just upwardly curved enough that he doesn’t consider the expression completely inappropriate to deliberately display in front of another human being, though close, and his eyes are clearly stiff. “Teenagers is the name of a single off the album Danger Days by the band My Chemical Romance. This is the album Teenagers by the band Reality Check.”

Acid flares in Murasakibara’s throat and radiates all the way down his torso to settle in his legs. His body suddenly feels like his shameful loss occurred only minutes ago, instead of several hours. Murasakibara shakes his head hard and reaches out to flip the record case over, then back again, and finds himself spitting through gritted teeth: “That bastard! These stains are Mountain Dew Code Red!” His fingers loosen their grip, and the record falls back into Himuro’s lap.

“Well,” Himuro says slowly, “you did try, I guess.” The level of his voice is even, the sentence isn’t rushed or loud or phrased as a question. Nothing to be afraid of. However, assuming no emotion at all seems really unsafe given all the emotion that’s been expressed already. Himuro is usually chipper and clearly-heard and animated. Murasakibara starts to suspect that Himuro is actually very unhappy, just trying to appear calm, rather than not being at all unhappy simply because he doesn’t appear extremely unhappy.

Murasakibara doesn’t say anything else yet. He sees no point in reaffirming that he did try, especially when Himuro already knows everything that he did, which was really nothing more than going into a store and spending his own allowance.

“This has made me think more about…” Himuro glances up at the lights hanging behind Murasakibara. “I think there’s something I need to tell you now, Atsushi, okay?”

Murasakibara hates it when people ask him this type of question that he can’t address with facts because the other person is going to say the actual answer anyway. Silence in lieu of any response looks stupid. Whatever he’ll say isn’t going to change what Himuro says. “Okay,” says Murasakibara.

Himuro turns to face him, with a soft smile on his lips, and says, “I’m going to college at UCLA.”

# July 6th

There’s a plastic box of muffins on the counter. While he tears it open and rips the sticker holding the two halves of the box together, Murasakibara notices the date printed there. Mrs. Himuro must have bought these earlier today.

Himuro sits at a stool behind the counter and swings his legs. His chin is in his hand as he stares into space, thinking. They have nothing to do. “We can go to the movies, if you want.”

“Sure,” Murasakibara says.

Once they walk into the movie theater. Himuro manages to step ahead of him and sits down first, so Murasakibara files in after him, and gets to have his right arm free for a cup holder. He doesn’t understand why Himuro would specifically have his cup holder in the seat next to Murasakibara, whose arms are enormous. Midorima had often complained, when they ended up sitting next to each other by process of elimination, that he was never happier to be born left-handed.

The first thirty minutes aren’t very stimulating. Himuro might have thought that an action movie would cater to his own violent tastes as well as compensate for Murasakibara’s faltering English, but the simplicity of the story makes it all the harder to get attached. Murasakibara stands up.

“I’ll be going out to get candy,” says Murasakibara.

“See you,” says Himuro, flashing another smile. His head has barely turned; he’d already been looking in Murasakibara’s direction.

The glass display cases are much easier to view between film starting times, without preparing filmgoers crowded in the way, and he can pay quickly without repeating himself. Once Murasakibara lifts up the first box with both hands, he realizes his tactical error. He’s opened the underside of the box, though that’s only part of the underlying problem. The sides are indistinguishable by touch alone. In the darkened theater, he’ll inevitably get it turned around and spill candy at some point. When he tries to stretch the hole into something more distinctively shaped, his large fingers tear the opening too wide. It can’t be helped. He sets about eating all the candies right here.

As he strolls back into the theater, Murasakibara takes stock of the drastically altered color palette on the screen and concludes that several minutes must have passed if the main characters are in such a different location. He hears an explosion, and then--

“Ow! Be more careful, Atsushi!”

Murasakibara tilts his head down, away from the screen. He sees his own seat, empty, and his own arm rest, not empty, because Himuro had draped himself over the surface; now that he’s stretching back up, his dark hair falls behind his ears, and finally the light catches his pale face, a bruise where Murasakibara’s elbow caught him on the forehead.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t notice you. Maybe you shouldn’t have worn all black, then. It’s summer, anyway. Don’t you feel hot?”

Himuro blinks. Murasakibara briefly prepares himself to defend his knowledge of physics, light refraction. Darker fabric absorbs light and makes the wearer warmer. Instead, the riposte is: “Lots of people dress like this in LA.” 

Himuro impresses him sometimes. In fact, Murasakibara realizes, he’s probably referring to some subcultural nuance and phrased his explanation in that simplistic way because he realized that Murasakibara never would have heard of it. Himuro has drawn himself back into a sitting position and stays there for the rest of the film, silent, captivated.

As soon as they get home, Mrs. Himuro takes him aside to sort through all his laundry. By the time that Murasakibara is allowed back into the kitchen, he sees that Himuro is at the front door, wearing the ring around his neck and long shiny shorts and nothing else. Only his feet, shuffling into sandals with multiple ankle straps, have relatively pale skin matching Himuro’s face; his calves to his kneecaps match his arms. The small aberrations show up underneath the long, modest swimsuits that American men wear. Murasakibara has only seen them very briefly when Himuro takes off his basketball shorts in the locker room.

“Shu and the guys are going out surfing,” he explains.

Murasakibara has no idea who Shu is, let alone “the guys”; at first he almost expects that Himuro is going to be talking about footwear, but he says it like a name, and probably not even an American guy, somebody Japanese. It’s hard to pluck that meaning out of a sentence when Himuro hardly ever bothers with honorifics, though. He hasn’t said one since setting foot on this shore.

“I don’t have a swimsuit,” says Murasakibara. There had been an involved discussion with his mother about the value of that expenditure. She had done research; she strongly suspected that even in the States a swimsuit that fit him would be hard to buy ready-made. Murasakibara still wasn’t interested enough to place an order in advance for something that he might have to try on and send back all over again.

With no change in his smiling expression, Himuro says, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and closes the door. Three hours later, Murasakibara realizes that Himuro wasn’t even holding multiple surfboards.

# December 27th

“I thought that UCLA didn’t accept early decisions.”

Himuro widens his eye in shock, at first, and then his teeth show. “I got in on verbal commitment as an athlete!” His voice is raised. This emotion is almost definitely anger, then. “Do you really think I’m that insignificant of a player, Atsushi?”

“No!” cries Murasakibara. The motivation for his initial scream is mostly that the affirmative answer would make Himuro angrier. Murasakibara has never entertained the notion that anybody could beat him in a one-on-one, though admittedly this was always of lower priority than “Akashi Seijuro never loses”. He does admire Himuro’s basketball skills, though, immensely – they wouldn’t have beaten Shutoku without somebody quickly picking up the ball and precisely passing or shooting, once Murasakibara blocked one of Midorima’s ambitious shots. 

Images flash through his head of the match against To’o, the foiled counterattack that kept Yosen in the lead at the end of the last quarter. Aomine screened him effortlessly, and Murasakibara almost thought that he had been wrong to stop lingering by the hoop all game. Wakamatsu was effectively keeping Liu from catching up in spite of their difference in power, because Momoi had predicted their formation. Sakurai received the long pass from the point guard, and his quick release shot would have sealed the deal imminently. Then Himuro caught up to him, going unnoticed after he had faked an attempt to block the pass course between Sakurai and Aomine. He cut the ball out of Sakurai’s hands and swiftly passed it back to Yosen’s point guard, who set up Liu to take a two-point shot for himself.

Like most of his sentiments, Murasakibara can’t come up with pretty words to express these ideas. He doesn’t say anything before Himuro snaps at him again. 

“UCLA was one of the places I visited when I went back to America over Thanksgiving break.”

Murasakibara looks up at the ceiling. He tries to remember a single place that Himuro mentioned visiting. His mind’s eye, unhelpfully, coughs up the scents of the snacks that Himuro brought back. Something twists in his stomach. Hunger, he assumes at first, because he characterizes at least ninety percent of all sensations as appropriate preamble for eating snacks and has almost never experienced unpleasantness as a result. His gut continues to churn, though, as he thinks about Himuro going to America for spring break and not coming back this time. Murasakibara pushes past the discomfort to parse the words.

“Ara ara, when you say it like that it sounds like you didn’t even consider a Japanese college at all. I think they’d take you too, though.”

“That’s because I didn’t,” replies Himuro instantly, and Murasakibara remembers that the first kanji in his name means “ice”.

“Why not?” says Murasakibara. The blankets are getting uncomfortable underneath his legs, and he turns his body to face Himuro even though the lights reflect brightly off the wall behind him.

“I want to overcome my past.” Himuro continues speaking in a calmer manner. “I feel like becoming the best high school basketball player in Japan was always too personal, you know? Maybe that’s why I could never go into the zone.”

Murasakibara mulls this over. Then his brow furrows harder. “You don’t want to play basketball with me anymore.”

Himuro smiles, a few inches at a time. “I don’t mean never again, necessarily.”

“It won’t be the same,” counters Murasakibara harshly. “If it wasn’t going to be the same being opponents against Kagami, like you just said, then it definitely won’t be the same being teammates with me.” In the back of his head, he’s deeply resentful that of course Kagami has come up, again.

“I know what I said—” Himuro has snapped in English, such that Murasakibara in fact does not know what he said, and closes his eyes in frustration for a few seconds before he can repeat in Japanese, “I know what I said.”

“You feel bad that I sound like I didn’t think you’re good at basketball just because I didn’t remember this one thing about the college.”

“It is not just this one thing about college,” Himuro counters with his eyes narrowed. “I’m the one who remembers everything.” His voice keeps getting louder. “Your birthday, your favorite snacks, your favorites of anything besides snacks. Has it ever occurred to you that I’d get sick of living this way? Haven’t I told you that you have to keep an eye out more?”

“Yes,” says Murasakibara, because he remembers the scoldings after every jumper violation including the one at the beginning of the match they lost today, he knows that “no” would make Himuro sad, and the candy weighs in his stomach, like the refused gift of pickled fish chips that he finished by himself on Halloween. The next words come out of Murasakibara’s mouth heavy, halfway to a question instead of a statement, because he doesn’t know anything, does he. “I’m not good enough.”

“Atsushi, don’t—” Himuro was probably going for, don’t cry, judging by the suddenly cracked sound of his voice. “Don’t go yet.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Murasakibara, who crosses his arms. He realizes that the tears have made his voice sound sulky, and takes this as an excuse to make his petty next words even surlier. “You’re the one who’s going away, Muro-chin.”

“Wait, please, listen.” With an impressive lack of rhetoric forethought Himuro seizes this exact opportunity to go away insofar as he stands up, though he does this in a nonsudden motion and with both his empty hands raised. He takes delicate steps backwards to the bookshelf, smiling widely all the while, and reaches with both hands to tenderly pick up something rectangular in reindeer printed wrapping.

“I got you a Christmas present, Atsushi. Just you.” Himuro is speaking in a soft voice as he smiles. His eye is glistening; Murasakibara is in awe that a tear doesn’t leak out yet. “I know that I threw myself into planning the party to spend more time with other people. And I can’t go on forever the way things have been. That doesn’t that you were never special to me. Atsushi,” and he pushes the box forward into Murasakibara’s hands. “Here.”

Murasakibara stares blankly at Himuro’s face, just long enough to affirm that he was actually paying enough attention to not get scolded, and then immediately avarice surges back to the surface as he turns his gaze down onto the package and rips away the paper with two motions, one for each of the opposite corners, paying no mind to the ribbon, which falls to the floor, also in shreds.

“Biothermodynamics,” says the hard cover of the book. The corners are hard, there’s no separate paper cover; this was printed at a university press. The text on the back confirms that the content discusses the conversion of energy into physical movement of the human body. It’s exactly the topic that has kept Murasakibara up at night ever since his team lost to Seirin, and he’s never had the words to tell Himuro about it, only vague rants about his sessions with Fukui and Okamura. Somehow Himuro put the pieces together…

A new feeling overwhelms every nerve of his body, and he can only mumble a few words through the redoubled onslaught of sobs: “Not fair, Muro-chin,” he says, “not fair.” Resentment, he thinks he feels, how Himuro used such hurtful terms for emotions that still let him do something so kind. This might even be outright anger, because he wants to crush something. The edges of that impulse are warmer than usual, though, not as simple as the softening effect of his abstract knowledge that violence is wrong.

He still has nothing to say as Himuro sits back down on the bed at a new angle, knee brushing against his thigh. Then he remembers the ending of every Christmas movie that he has ever watched, all three, though the background music in those is probably in most cases something other than the last track off “I Gave You My Bullets, You Gave Me Your Love”. Like a bear, Murasakibara puts his arms around Himuro and hugs him.


	5. Last Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The promised epilogue is here. My Christmas present to my loyal little army of readers is the only part of this story that doesn't take place in December. May closure and warmth be with you all.
> 
> [Here is a playlist.](https://playmoss.com/en/flightofangels/playlist/biothermodynamics) Rest in peace, George Michael. I listened to "Last Christmas" at least fifty separate times while writing this story.

# July 28th

The view from the window of the train is classic stuff for early August in Japan. Deep green leaves on the crepe-myrtle lining the plains, with occasional patches of sunflowers, that lead up to the deep blue mountains. The mountaintops are already much too cold to climb. The tourists only go for it in the middle of July, the very hottest two weeks of the year. Murasakibara has been told that piece of trivia over and over, often followed up with some joke about how Murasakibara wouldn’t need to climb, per se, so much as put his hand out and touch the peak, and if he ever hears this joke again he’ll probably crumple up whoever says it into a little ball and throw them at the top if they’re so jealous of people who can easily reach summits.

One of the best things about not attending Yosen next year, Murasakibara thinks, will be the decrease in long train rides. He’s finally figured out how they’re so frustrating even when the snack cart comes by regularly. There’s not ample opportunity to stretch his legs. He overcompensates by sprawling out over an entire cluster of five seats. His head is on the middle seat, his shoulder on the seat closest to the window, and his legs are on the three seats facing the opposite direction behind him; with bent knees, only his ankles dangle into the aisle. The other aisle seat is where that book, Biothermodynamics, has fallen out of his bag and is spread with the front cover open to the endpapers that had been signed in shiny silver pen.

 _Dear Atsushi,_  
_Do your best in the interhigh. If you don't, I've asked Masako to hit you a second time, because I can't be there. I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more. It might be hard for me to answer your calls once I'm over there again; just know that you're still my precious friend._  
_Love, Tatsuya_

This trip for the interhigh could be the last one before the winter cup. Unless there’s another training camp. Murasakibara is tabbing through the club activities schedule on his phone when suddenly the device vibrates in his hand. An incoming call from Aka-chin.

“Do you know,” says Akashi, “if the Yosen high school men’s basketball club has any preexisting plans for activities taking place outside of Akita during the first half of October this year?”

“Hello to you too,” Murasakibara says, aware that he’s done exactly the same thing in other conversations. The answer is no, which he almost says before something even more important occurs to him. “Oh… You didn’t,” says Murasakibara, as the implications start to sink in for him.

“I haven’t! I assure you that I haven’t yet taken concrete actions of any type whatsoever,” says Akashi, voice pitching up now, in one of those precious moments when it’s the most obvious that he has less testosterone in his system than a lot of the other Teiko alumni. It’s all innocent indignation. Murasakibara realizes that he must have been sarcastic himself, and a sudden flare of anger flashes behind his forehead. He doesn’t understand how English speakers do this all day.

“We were almost gonna go attend a training camp in Hokkaido but they decided that those volunteer activities would be too much like the stuff we already do around here.” Strictly speaking those activities occur in Akita, not on the bullet train. Murasakibara figures that Akashi will extrapolate that. He always talks about “we” in a certain sense and means Rakuzan these days.

“Excellent,” says Akashi.

“Aka-chin, if you can really make all the schools in Tokyo come up here just for my birthday, why haven’t you done it before?”

There’s a pause on the other side, high beeps of static that sound the most like whimpers coming from lips pressed together. When Akashi speaks again, he uses the pacing of an apology though he describes a feat of incredible generosity. “My resources could only be used this way once out of three years, and I knew you would need it the most this year.”

Murasakibara does the math in his head. This means after the graduation of the people who were second years in his first year, and Akashi definitely isn’t talking about Liu. He wonders how Himuro would have felt to know that Akashi acknowledged him as such an important person. Though it happened before they got to know each other, Himuro was furious about the abstentions in the interhigh two years ago, Murasakibara is pretty sure, considering he was so worked up about Murasakibara giving up after playing for like thirty-five whole minutes. He will never know for sure. Even if he sent a message to Himuro and asked him, and got an answer, he wouldn’t be completely certain that Himuro would mean the words he said. 

“Yeah, sure, come on up here. I’ll show you Our Lady of Akita.” He’s never been, and he won’t have anything better to do.

“Excellent. Before then, I shall see you on the court, Murasakibara. We look forward very much to playing you.”

Akashi cut the line there. He had always loved getting the last word. Murasakibara mulled it over in his mind, Akashi’s reference to seeing you-singular, Murasakibara, and playing you-plural, Yosen. There had been considerable fanfare associated with the first time that Midorima, for example, had said “we”. Murasakibara tried to remember if he had ever done the same thing. During the game against Seirin – quite possibly the only game he would ever play against them, he had an increasing trepidation – he had gotten worked up. 

On the other hand, he couldn’t remember a single specific team play where “we” would have meant something besides “me and Himuro”.

Murasakibara gets up. He looks at his phone and his snack wrappers and his overflowing bag, the only things occupying the seats. Himuro would never leave his stuff alone. He had explained this policy on the plane ride from LAX to Narita, being awake most of the journey this time and getting up out of his seat occasionally. “I’ll be right back, Atsushi, can you look after my bag?”

“That sounds troublesome…” Murasakibara frowned at him. He was really frustrated that the typical response of “see you” was not sufficient for Himuro’s purposes. 

“We have this saying in America called finders keepers, losers weepers.”

Murasakibara only understood one of those English words without prepositions to string them together. He hadn’t known that English had yonjijukugo. “Is finder another word for winner?”

Himuro smiled, a little one that meant something was cute. “It means that people who see your stuff lying around, they just take it, Atsushi. They won’t track you down to give it back the way they do in Japan. You have to keep an eye out for yourself.”

This train’s compartment and the next one have both been rented out for the team, though. Murasakibara can’t bring himself to worry about theft. He’s only going as far as the team’s other compartment, anyway. 

Finding his target doesn’t take long. Akiya is sitting near the front of the compartment, where it’s quieter. He’s playing a video game with headphones. Akiya is a first year, their power forward, scouted from the team in Osaka that was the runner-up in the national middle school championships. He had lived in that city his whole life with his Japanese father and African-American mother.

“Hey,” Murasakibara says. He waves his hand in front of the boy’s face, figuring that will be necessary with the headphones. Akiya seems to have noticed, what with how quickly he takes the headphones out; they come out in one go, of course, being small relative to his 202cm body.

“Murasakibara-sempai,” says Akiya, stumbling a little over so many syllables in a row. They’ve never really talked before. It occurs to Murasakibara that after his own graduation, Akiya will almost undoubtedly become the new center in the same unsentimental way that Okamura was dethroned by Murasakibara.

“I’ve got some advice for you,” Murasakibara says, because he might as well get used to putting other people in awkward positions.

Akiya gives an expectedly awkward reply: “What is it?”

“Do you know how you become better at catching passes?”

His kohai stares. “Well,” he starts, and he’s definitely hit pause on his video game now, because both his hands are pressed together near his lips. “You need to develop your grip strength. There are some coaches that have you literally hold a big rock…”

Kiyoshi Teppei is probably laughing somewhere out there. Murasakibara shakes his head. That’s not where he was going with this. He exposes the palm of his outstretched hand. 

“You put your hand where your teammate thinks the ball will go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my love to Abby (with a side of yikes) and Yin and Mali, who read the story's erratic earlier drafts or outlines; love is the only thing you gain as you share, so there's more for Gregg, a brilliant editor, as well as Isis who always cheered me and gladly accepted the unspoiled reading experience.
> 
> To my sweetheart, may this be just one of many Christmas miracles made easier by tender support from you.
> 
> To one more person, and any other readers:
> 
> Merry Christmas
> 
>   
> 
> 
> and
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Thank You


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